“Mad Max: Fury Road” Gets New Character Posters At SDCC

Australian director George Miller is returning to the franchise that made him famous with next summer’s highly anticipated reboot Mad Max: Fury Road. With The Dark Knight Rises and Locke star Tom Hardy stepping into the title role and Oscar-winner Charlize Theron taking on the role of the main antagonist, the film promises to be an acting powerhouse as much as an action thrill ride.

Shot largely without an actual script, Miller instead used detailed storyboards that he crafted close to twenty years ago while first thinking about this idea, but he shelved it after 9/11 and only picked it up again once he discovered Hardy, the only man he felt could do justice to the role originated by Mel Gibson way back in 1979.

The film was actually shot way back in 2012, right after Hardy finished playing Bane, but its release has been pushed back several times, and additional footage was shot as early as late last year. Utilizing practical effects rather than an over-abundance of cgi is one of the selling points of the film as Miller debuted the first footage from the film at San Diego Comic Con on Saturday.

Though that footage has yet to be seen outside of Hall H, the first four character posters for the film were released, showing Hardy and Theron, as well as Nicholas Hoult as a character named Nux, and most awesomely, the original film’s antagonist Toecutter, Hugh Keays-Byrne, this time playing a character named Immortan Joe.

The film (finally) opens in North America on May 15, 2015, just two weeks after Avengers 2–and, in a fun UPDATE, we’re now adding video show at the Comic Con (with maybe a minute missing) that serves as the first Fury Road trailer. It’s pretty amazing, and suddenly has a lot more fans really excited for this one…